Sunday, June 7, 2009

Stock Larger Package Sizes

Given a choice among littlest, medium, and biggest package sizes, some food shoppers—-usually what are called promotion-oriented shoppers—-pick the biggest one, while others—-prevention-oriented shoppers—-pick the medium size. If your shoppers have the money to spend and if it's to the benefit of your shoppers to purchase more, you can increase the package sizes they buy—-with the added profit this brings—-when you increase the package sizes of your littlest, medium, and biggest versions.
     An example of this came from Duke University researchers' look at purchases of soft drinks at fast-food restaurants. When the littlest-medium-biggest choices were 12-ounce, 21-ounce, and 32-ounce cups, promotion-oriented shoppers most often selected the 32 ounce version—-the biggest size. When the choices were supersized to 21, 32, and 44 ounces, those shoppers selected the 44-ounce cup—-the new biggest size. At the other end, prevention-oriented shoppers liked the 21-ounce cup—-the size choice in the middle—-when the choices were 12, 21, and 32 ounces. But when the choices were 21, 32, and 44 ounces, the prevention-oriented shoppers liked the 32-ounce size—the new medium size. The 32-ounce drinker moved up to being a 44-ounce drinker, and the 21-ounce drinker moved up to being a 32-ounce drinker.
     This power to switch shoppers to larger package sizes works better with soft drink cup purchases than with, let's say, furniture purchases, but it works for more than just food retailers.
     Will dieters be angry that all you offer are the larger food package sizes? Well, you actually might be helping out the dieters. A group of researchers in Portugal and the Netherlands say that dieters find it more comfortable to exercise self-control in their eating after purchasing large package sizes than small package sizes of the same foods.

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